A Spy for All Reasons

The CIA’s Frank Wisner was a master of the dark arts—until he became a burnt out case, an intriguing new biography shows

As a national security reporter for Newsweek in the 1990’s, Doug Waller figured he was perfectly positioned to cultivate a top CIA official who had just left the agency. His quarry was John Waller, who had spent years in the agency’s clandestine service specializing in Middle East affairs and later served as the CIA’s inspector general. Doug Waller was convinced the two were distantly related and that the presumed family connection just might help him unlock a goldmine of intelligence secrets. 

“Hey cousin,” he told John Waller after tracking him down in retirement. “Can we talk?” The CIA man was polite but wise to Doug’s gambit. “That’s not going to work,” he told him in so many words. True to his agency heritage, he gave up nothing.

The reporter, though, was undeterred and continued to pore through agency archives and memoirs to learn more about the covert machinations of his namesake. This month, it paid off—big time —with the release of his new book, The Determined Spy, a massive 645-page biography of Frank Wisner, the legendary CIA pioneer who oversaw secret operations in the heady days of the Cold War.

It’s an illuminating, action-packed account that chronicles multiple CIA adventures—and misadventures—around the globe, most notably the agency-instigated 1953 coup in Iran that toppled the democratically elected government of the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and solidified the shah’s autocratic hold on power, an act that continues to reverberate throughout the region to this day.